


Live Forever

by CinderScoria



Series: her name is jade [2]
Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: ... I hope, Gen, I write much better now, Spoilers, and we've decided he's an ass, in my defense this was like two years ago, it's not that far tbh but let's just say we've met Van Ark, prepare for unedited ramblingness, spoilers for... let's say the end of season two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 17:32:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4358072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CinderScoria/pseuds/CinderScoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were all somebody before the end of the world. (Sam just wishes she wasn't so damn young.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Live Forever

Runner Five has a Power Rangers watch (Time Force, which is ironic and appropriate, Sam supposes), and if that isn’t the biggest indicator that she’s younger than she looks Sam doesn’t know what is. It glows in the dark, too—very convenient. Sam would laugh at it if he didn’t know how much it means to her. She lost it once on a supply run. Sam still remembers the pinch in her face as she fought the urge to cry, and how the tears did come in the form of relief when Seven returned it back to her.

He’s getting better at deciphering her expressions. She’s fairly expressive. But he watches her face enough to notice that she stares off into space more often than not and rubs her throat where the scars from glass shards slicing across her neck had severed her vocal chords zig-zagged her skin. She didn’t tell him this, of course, but he can be a pretty good detective if he says so himself. It’s not so hard to find out where she came from, what she was before she was this. Mullins has an entire profile on her—they're the ones who’d saved her life. But not her voice. Sam kind of hates them for that (even if there was nothing they could do). It’s irrational, he knows, but screw logic. She’s a kid. She’s still a kid.

And it’s really not fair to be seventeen and the most valued Runner in all of Abel (and New Canton, and Mullins for that matter). To be on Van Ark’s hit list, to lose so many people, to be as maternal as she is towards the other Runners. Not fair that someone who must’ve been such a sweet girl has been turned into this. But this is the apocalypse. Fair isn’t a word anymore, isn’t a concept one can indulge in and live by. Before she was this she was a writer, a student, a child. Now her eyes have aged so many centuries she could pass for ten years older if she had the mind to. Sam’s sure he’s older too, in the way that slumps the shoulders and dims the light behind the eyes. He didn’t know where his life was going before. He doesn’t really know where his life is going now.

At least he can talk. Five can’t talk. He sees it in her mouth, the way it quirks into a ready smile at something Simon said. She obviously used to talk a lot. Her lips still form the words. Sometimes she catches herself, and a look of shame crosses her face before she shuts down and leaves. And it breaks Sam’s heart. He didn’t know he could still feel like the world owes them more than this. He thought he’d accepted this fate months ago, that God had effectively screwed them over and that no amount of bitching and moaning would change that.

But if there’s any force of goodness out there,  to let him hear her voice just once…

There isn’t. He knows there isn’t, and thinking like this amounts to nothing. He’ll have to settle for this, he figures, for the quick smiles and the glow in the dark Power Rangers watch. To preserve her as she is, so she doesn’t have to grow up faster than she’s meant to. ‘Cause she’s a child, yeah, but she’s also his Runner. And he’ll be damned if he lets her lose anything else.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a fuckin' DRABBLE


End file.
